page_title: 86th Street (Manhattan)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: 86th Street (Manhattan) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Lithograph showing "Blackwells Island, East River, From Eighty Sixth Street, New York," published by Currier &amp; Ives, 152 Nassau Street, 1862. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collection.
context_page_description: 86th Street is a major two-way street in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs in two major sections: between East End and Fifth Avenues on the Upper East Side, and between Central Park West and Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side. The western segment feeds into the 86th Street transverse across Central Park, which connects to East 84th and 85th Streets on the eastern side.
  On the West Side its continuous cliff-wall of apartment blocks including The Belnord is broken by two contrasting landmarked churches at prominent corner sites, the Tuscan Renaissance Saints Paul and Andrew United Methodist Church at the corner of West End Avenue, and the rusticated brownstone Romanesque Revival West-Park Presbyterian Church at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue.
context_section_description: The street was designated by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 as one of 15 east-west streets that would be 100 feet (30 m) in width (while other streets were designated as 60 feet (18 m) in width).
  Until the years following World War II, Yorkville on the East Side was a predominantly German community, and East 86th Street was nicknamed the German Broadway.  The early settlement originally clustered around the 86th Street stop of the New York and Harlem Railroad. Since the late 1980s, nearly all distinctly German shops have disappeared, apart from a few restaurants on Second Avenue.  The street was commonly considered a boundary for public utilities.  For example, different telephone exchanges at East 79th and 97th Streets served the north and south sides of the street.  Local number portability in the early 21st century allowed transferring phone numbers to either side.
  A sunken street through Central Park, the 86th Street transverse, connects West 86th Street with eastbound East 84th Street and westbound East 85th Street.  Miners Gate provides pedestrian access to the park at East 86th, and Mariners Gate at West 85th.
caption: "Blackwells Island, East River, from Eighty Sixth Street", Currier & Ives, 1862: the villa overlooking the river had belonged to John Jacob Astor
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